When will Candidates Address Real Concerns of Americans?

[Guest Gandalf Grey]

When will the Candidates Address the Real Concerns of Americans?

 

By Timothy Gatto

Created Jul 14 2007 - 7:16pm

 

Maybe I'm just not "getting it" but the only people that I hear that are

saying the right things are Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and

sometimes John Edwards. I'm talking about the laws that were passed that

water down our freedom under the Constitution. I'm talking about the

influence that the corporate sector has on our political system. I don't

hear Hillary Clinton standing up for anyone's rights. All I hear from her is

that Bush is a bad man. Same with most of the others, it's safe to say Bush

is a bastard. That doesn't take any guts. It's a very "safe" thing to say.

 

Where are the candidates that ask why we are torturing people we designate

as terrorists? Where are the candidates that want to repeal the Military

Commissions Act of 2006? Where are the candidates that want to repeal the

Patriot Act? The same thing goes for the Insurrection Act that gives the

executive branch the power to use the State's National Guard for Federal law

enforcement authority that goes against everything Posse Comitatus has stood

for. Not using a standing Army to give the Federal government police powers

over the population. This is remarkable that no candidate except Kucinich,

Gravel and Paul have mentioned this. This goes to the very fabric of our

democracy and 'nary is a word said by "the big boys" who seem to be happy

with this expanded Executive Power that Bush has created.

 

Since the attacks on the United States on 9/11, the US has gone from a

fairly open society, to one of mistrust and more stringent laws. This is

understandable to a degree, but the laws that are most restrictive and

abhorrent have been directed not at foreigners that visit or that want entry

into the US, but at ordinary working class citizen's. Why is it that when we

were attacked by people who were not citizens, does the Federal Government

need to use the power of the military on its own citizens? Where is the

practicality of that? Why haven't Clinton and Obama and the others addressed

it?

 

There are many reasons that Bush is looked at as an enemy of democracy. The

Iraq War is only part of it. Yet, if you look at the rhetoric of the people

that want to succeed him, the Iraq War is the ONLY thing that they harp on.

That is because some of them were culpable in the Federal Governments attack

on the Constitution. We need a candidate that will address ALL of the issues

that have weakened the Constitution.

 

Let me make a case in point. Ron Paul is a Conservative Republican. Yet he

is the darling of some progressives. The reason for that is because Ron Paul

is a strict constitutionalist. With this sense of what is lawful under the

constitution, he has brought up the very same things that progressives have

been fighting against, the same things that I mentioned in the second

paragraph. The constitution has become so abrogated by Bush and the 109th

Congress, that a Republican Conservative candidate has become attractive to

progressive thinking voters and for good reason. He defends what can and

can't

be done lawfully.

I'm waiting for the Democratic candidates to start speaking out against the

run around the FISA Court that Bush pulled with his illegal wiretapping. I'm

looking to hear them talking about reinstating Posse Comitatus. I'm looking

to hear them talk against National ID Cards and against computerized touch

screen voting, and the repeal of the Patriot Act. I want to hear about

taking big corporate dollars out of Federal Elections. So far I haven't

heard enough, a snippet here and a snippet there, but still no real

discussion. These people know what we want, but they in their haughty frame

of mind don't think that we know enough to change the status quo.

 

They are wrong. We can be trusted to tell them what we want and also what we

want them to do. They forget that they work for us, and not the other way

around. When I start hearing these candidates start taking seriously about

serious issues, I'll be happy. In the meantime, to me they're just more of

the same. No real leaders there when at this point in our history, we

defiantly need one.

 

_______

Timothy V. Gatto

 

 

 

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson